It Only Hurts
by zorrie
Summary: It only hurts when your eyes are open / Lies get tossed and truth is spoken. This is the story of how Matt and Mello faced the last night they knew they'd have, and how they got there.


Once again, I'm extraordinarily bad at coming up with titles. :)

This was somehow inspired by a quote from Emerson – ''How can I hope for a friend,'' he asked in his journal, ''who have never been one?"

Lyrics are from It Only Hurts by Default, but the stanzas are in reverse order, starting with the last and ending with the first. In memory of Matt and Mello.

(It only hurts when your eyes are open / Lies get tossed and truth is spoken  
It only hurts when that door gets open / Dreams are lost and hearts are broken)

Mello watches Matt's fingers flit across the keyboard, and the delicate patter of rain outside layers over the click-clack of keys. Code scrolls across the screen at a speed nearly impossible to read, but Mello doesn't need to look to know Matt's eyes, behind the customary haze of orange-tinted goggles, are picking apart the endless lines without error. It's what he does.

Inside the dingy rented room where they've crammed in crates of technology and a mini-fridge to tide them over for the next month, not a single light is lit. Not that there are a great many lights at their disposal; the bare bulb in the ceiling fan that swings unsteadily as it spins and the desk lamp near the bed provide a pitiful glow at best. But the anemic bluish blush of the laptop's screen is more than enough in the 3am darkness. Mello, leaning against the wall with his legs spread out to either side and Matt leaning into his chest, can see just fine.

They're hacking into the database of the Japanese taskforce, searching for incriminating evidence they know Kira isn't dumb enough to leave behind. Mello's back is up against the wall in the figurative sense as well, because each and every lead has crumbled in their hands. Without the verifiable facts necessary to convince, let alone compel anyone to action, Matt can feel Mello panicking as the net closes. He can see it every time Mello presses his fingers to his temple, chocolate long ago forgotten, and stiffens so so slightly. Just a bit, the subtlest tensing of shoulders, but when Mello lets Matt rub his back every so often he winces like there are needles between his bones.

Strong conjecture won't make the grade with any authority, be it mafia or national security, even when it's all they have. Mello has never had patience for the senselessness in life. Matt can try to hold them both together, and try he does, but they both know he can never succeed. Mello, who is made of contradictions and juxtapositions that should not be able to function although they do, is relying on a tremulous sanity cobbled together of chocolate and tired irony, second hand smoke and backrubs. There are times in his life when Matt has seen Mello work himself ragged, truly living for nothing more than to pass Near who'd somehow pipped him to the post again, but Matt has never seen Mello work like this. He has never seen Mello pit himself against forces he could never hope to overwhelm, because up until now there had been none.

Even though it's only rain, and the only clock they had Mello slammed into the wall last week, the monotonous drone of raindrops sounds like a countdown. Like sand in an hourglass, the bottom filling up, the pervasive drip of rain smothers Mello. He tucks his chin over Matt's shoulder and peers in closer at the data the virus pulls up. Matt shifts, pulling his knees up so the laptop is braced against his thighs, and adjusts the angle of the screen. Mello watches Matt's fingers, typing deftly, long, elegant, piano-player fingers that could have sounded out Chopin in another life. He tries not to think about what he himself, Mihael Keehl, could have been. What _they_ could have been. It's immaterial now.

There's a softening of Mello's eyes that has never before occurred, and for a moment his face twists into what in another person might have been loss, but Matt will never see it. His focus is on the numbers they are both trying to make sense of, with the desperation of drowning men. They work all hours of the night these days, avoiding eachother's faces because it opens floodgates they cannot afford to compromise. They anaesthetize themselves with searching and objectify their findings, and Mello pretends it is only a puzzle and he has the unshakeable calm of Near, while Matt tries to keep his heart from being crushed by the weight of the world on Atlas' shoulders.

(It only hurts when your eyes are open / Lies get tossed and truth is spoken  
It only hurts when that door gets open / Dreams are lost and hearts are broken)

Mello knows Matt is trying to get to him so he can help, trying to find a chink in the flawless façade that Mello has begun to hide behind more and more. What Matt doesn't understand is that Mello's worn the mask so long it's become his face, and Matt won't find any chinks because there are none. Sitting there in the quiet balm of shadows, apparently reviewing data but inwardly licking his wounds, Mello feels a twinge of disgust that he can't just snap out of it, he _isn't snapping out of it_ so it must mean he _won't_ and he's _weak_ –

Mello hates, yes, hates Matt for not stopping him, not snapping Mello out of this patently un-Mello funk; and Mello knows he's the one holding Matt at arm's length, like an asshole; and Mello on the one hand regrets being irrational, but he never was like this until Matt came back into his life, so isn't it the redhead's fault? And yet Mello needs him, needs Matt more than anything he's ever known. Mello is a mess. Matt knows, and he's gentle with Mello who's so close to the edge, his mind that infers out of thin air to find some trail to track the killer but is perilously close to burning out.

There's a dullness in Matt's voice that supercedes exhaustion when he breaks into the drawn-out pause that's been growing like a fungus between the m. "Mel, I feel like I'm missing something."

Mello nuzzles the curve of his neck, thinking the same thing but not wanting to make matters worse. "You're not, Matt. Maybe there's just nothing to see."

"That's absurd and you know it."

"Maybe I do."

Matt turns sharply, away from Mello. "Quit messing with me, please."

"I never would." Mello grabs his shoulder when Matt goes perfectly still, realizing the error in his words. "I meant that I'd never mess _with_ you, Matt."

Matt _mhms_ noncommitally and shrugs out of Mello's grip, turning back around to glance at his laptop. After a moment he leans back against Mello's chest, but there's something broken between them that neither is sure how to fix. Some mechanism of communication they'd never been aware of had been faltering for some time, but it was well and truly out of commision now.

A few clicks of the mouse and Matt has begun hacking another database, three different programs steel-tooth-combing all resources available and all resources restricted as well. Nothing evades Matt when he sets himself to a task. Mello feels smug at his lover's prowess, before remembering they're on shaky terms and wondering, in this environment, whether Matt's accomplishments still count as his. It certainly feels like they do, but Matt might be offended and so Mello restrains himself from voicing his appreciation. Mello settles for holding his hand instead, and is relieved when Matt squeezes back. Matt's touchy these days. Thank him and Mello gets his head bitten off for trivializing Matt's love for him (What, did you think I wouldn't do it for you?), congratulate him and Mello is mocking his ability, become in any way annoyed and Matt nearly goes to pieces although he'll never admit it. They're both at the end of their ropes, and neither can cope.

Mello feels sapped of something essential, and the sky's more grey than blue these days, just like chocolate doesn't taste as sweet and Matt's hand in his doesn't seem so warm. The logic in his mind, always so clear, feels corrupted beyond speaking. Mello's reasoning threatens to collapse like a house of cards, and when he tries to talk to Matt it's as though the mode of transportation squashes his thoughts and converts them to gibberish.

"Mel."

He says nothing, just rubs his thumb over the back of Matt's hand and breathes, in and out. Inhale, exhale, _his back's against the wall_ but Matt's here, it'll be okay… they'll manage, they always have.

"Mello."

And Mello marvels at how soft Matt's hands are, fingertips worn smooth from typing, remembering them ghosting over his jawline yesterday morning. _Hey. Mello._ He'd yawned and rolled over, mumbling something to Matt like _lemme sleep_, but Matt had pinned him down and peppered his face with kisses. _Listen. I'm here for you. Always gonna be, baby._ Mello thought, Here for me? No, nobody's here for me, I'm out in the cold and shivering, shivering in the abyss where my soul vacated from. The abyss you can't see because I won't show you, the abyss I won't show you because it has no right to be there and shouldn't exist, so it doesn't. I'll just ignore it until it goes away

And Matt had peppered his face with kisses while Mello thought but didn't speak, and finally Matt had whispered _You've gotta let down these masks, Mel. I can't see you in there, sometimes. _But Mello's worn the mask so long it's become his face, and everything else has been eroded or else decayed.

"Mello?" Matt sounds afraid, and the unfamiliar tone jolts Mello from his reverie.

He presses a quick kiss to Matt's neck and whispers "Yeah?"

Matt sags against him. "I found something."

With a hiss of relief Mello reads the display, a private communication over Takada's bodyguards and transportation. In the recesses of his mind a scheme is clicking together, but first he grapples for words to explain to Matt how much he _feels_ right now. If only there were a way to convert love into some communicable language, if only. But Mello gave up on words long ago and now is not the time for sex, so he flounders and fails and ends up simply asking "Any ideas?"

Although Mello wants to hurl the laptop at the wall and jump Matt's bones, the hell with Kira, he slides into formality to focus on the business at hand. Masks can be beautiful, liberating even. Not this, not the false normalcy Mello in his desperation hides behind, but an identity to be left behind that unshackles someone from all they've been and said and done. Masks let people become faceless, nameless, something that is maybe nothing but has a moment to become anything or everything or both. Masks can let people disappear. Matt can't hold them both together if Mello won't be found.

"Yeah," Matt breathes into the stillness fraught with so much potential, "I do."

Thus began the beginning of the plan to end their lives.

(I swore that I would try since the last time, the last time)

Mello's arms wrap around Matt's waist, but they both know for whose comfort it be told, Matt's finding it uncomfortable to breathe. Mello's never been weak, but ebbing adrenaline has left him shaking and clutching too tightly to the things he's afraid to lose. Enough bars of chocolate have been crushed in his grip that Mello is beginning to fear he's come down with his own version of the Midas touch, so Matt says nothing about the vise-like pressure on his ribs. The heart they are guarding doesn't belong to Matt anymore, anyway, rendering his ribs redundant. And he melts into Mello, remembering _It's going to be okay_ and _Shh, I'm here now_, and nothing else matters.

[flashbacks]

(I know what you're feeling, it's hard to believe in someone, someone who's not there  
I know that you're waiting 'cause love is worth saving, but only for so long, so long, so long)

Matt's hand is trembling as he tries to light his cigarette, and after the fourth miserable failure he chokes out something that sounds like fuckshit_ican'tdothis _and hurls the stupid thing at the wall. It just bounces dully off and falls, which isn't nearly enough because Matt wants to break something and make it hurt, make it hurt.

His throat is tight, and raw, and Matt has an insane urge to scream and scream and scream. But he's been puking all night, and other than possibly losing his voice Matt can't think of what it might accomplish. Logic begins to thin and dissolve, until Matt is swept with acid anger that doesn't care _why_ or _what_ or _how_, and knows only that it needs to shoot a valve in the pressure cooker before something terrible happens. His apartment has an awful draft, the walls are so thin he can hear the ruckus of hotshot teens on the street, and despite the smiling face and bright voice of the news reporter emanating from the living room TV Matt feels like he's standing in a wasteland.

364 days out of the year Matt can convince himself that he really is fine, and look at that money you've saved up, see you're getting somewhere, or go play that game and forget it, or shut up and stop thinking and go smoke a blunt if you have to _you're happy you're happy you're A-okay_ –

But he isn't, and today is the day that his life the rest of the year seems as brittle and grey as it actually is, and today is the day that he remembers no matter how hard he tries to make it stop.

_Hurt_ is such an overused word but it fits, it fits perfectly, and it is everything that is ripping Matt apart condensed into four words and one biting syllable. He can't stomach being alone. Every time this damn day rolls around, the walls he's built come tumbling down and Matt is fifteen in the middle of an ocean of pain without a lifeline. Alone with nothing left of years of the closest he's ever come to being happy, not even a note. Not even a note.

Matt's not strong enough to do this anymore, he thinks, because he's lost his perspective and he's lost his ability to reason and he's lost his sense of self and he's lost Mello.

Two years ago today.

(Miles away, promise from a burning bed, two worlds should never collide  
One word would end it if you ever heard  
Tear the page out that reminds me when I swore that I'd be strong  
Now the next time has come and gone, well maybe I'm wrong, I know ...)

Mello is trying, he's trying really fucking hard. After spending his entire childhood losing by a nose, Mello should have been used to failure by now, but this is worse than anything he's ever known. He'd left Matt, but the world had seemed to be in the palm of his hand and Kira was so close that Mello didn't have time to consider his ultimate loss. Now, in the wreckage of innocence sacrificed and ideals betrayed for the greater good, all that Mello has ever done is worth nothing. All his life has accomplished is the monstrous scar that spreads across his face and neck and curls around his shoulder, disgusting mottled skin that remembers the screams of collapsing metal and crushed men. He isn't the prodigal son with hopes of redemption, and Mello has sunk too low, too low to even pray for a painless death. The things he's done. Mello's cold, inside and out; suddenly the mental walls around him crumble ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And then, one last cruelty for the sinner, memories Mello had thought he'd buried puncture what's left of his soul. Shards of spun-glass recollection, fragile and shimmering and shattering and slicing his stomach with terrible precision.

_It's early and Matt's still sleeping and Mello has got to go, now, before he loses his nerve. With one foot out the door he turns, god knows why. But Mello's glad he did, because there's moonlight from the window silvering Matt's hair and his eyelashes make dark perfect crescents against his cheek. Matt's smiling, smiling, so peacefully that Mello wants to never leave and run away as fast as he can. "Bye," he whispers, as much to himself as to Matt, who's dreaming of Mello although he'll never know that. Mello turns on his heel and peers down the hallway as the door clicks softly behind him, telling himself this is worth it because at least one of them can be would always follow 's why Mello can't say goodbye; it's too dangerous, because Mello's not strong enough. He came so close to begging Matt to come with he's outside, the fresh night air numbing his nose, Mello swears Matt is never to know._

Regret tears through his throat and claws down his oesophagus, expanding like a sea urchin in the pit of his stomach, uncurling from its fetal crouch and spreading its thin knobby wings. There's horror inside of him and his face is a mutilated wreck, and Mello only hopes that Matt's okay at least, and it was worth something after all.

Years spent nurturing delicate mafia connections, cultivating his imge until the world's resources lay at his beck and call, destroyed. Everything he left Wammy's House for, gone. All his plans are utterly useless, and Mello is left, for the first time in years, chilled with the realization of his aloneness. He wants to shoot something, possibly himself. He wants to wrench out of his stomach this sickening _ache_ that is throbbing and incessant and excruciating in its dullness. There's nothing left he can count on, nobody left in the world that he can call on.

Except maybe Matt.

And as Mello reaches for the phone, he knows that he's losing his mind.

(It only hurts when your eyes are open / Lies get tossed and truth is spoken  
It only hurts when that door gets open / Dreams are lost and hearts are broken)

Matt's sprawled, prone on the floor, sluggish and swamped with melancholy. He thinks maybe he should have taken his antidepressants, but the entire world is fucked and there's no such thing as normal, so who's to say he needs help? Everyone's depressed, and what they all really need is a kick in the ass so that they can _snap out of it_ because really it's all in their heads. It's all in his head.

But yesterday, yesteday's yesterday, each and every yesterday that led to this point and, really, what is Matt _doing?_ must all have been utter wastes themselves, because today is one. The future stretches out before him, a bleak and endless string of days that makes his flesh crawl and Matt want to end it all right now.

The phone rings.

Mello's sitting up, rigid, with the phone on speaker because he can't stand to see his hands shaking. The reciever lies on the counter, the smooth curve of its back sunning itself in the feeble flourescent light. He counts the rings, praying that Matt isn't there and that he picks up right now and that he changed his number and that he doesn't hate him. He's dialed from a restricted number, though, so chances are – but he can't think about it. Mello stares straight ahead and his eyes are wide and unseeing, wide to keep the film of tears that blurs his vision from brimming over.

And on the sixth ring, Matt picks up.

"Yeah?" Matt croaks, and Mello thinks he sounds like the living dead. "Who is it?"

"Mello." And Mello's burning, but this fire is in his veins and it's more like roiling acid.

There's a choked out gasp from Matt's end of the line and, in their respective apartments, Mello blinks rapidly while Matt holds the phone at arm's length as though it's a poisonous creature that might destroy him, and maybe it is. Nobody breathes.

"Fuck you," Matt says quietly. Then he throws his 'cell at the wall. It, too, bounces dully off, although there's a satisfying crack as the screen shatters. It joins the lighter on the floor.

Matt tucks his head between his knees and screams.

Matt doesn't think about his phone lying a couple of yards away, and Mello on the other end. Had he, Matt still wouldn't have cared. Let Mello hear him break. It's not as though Matt has any pride left.

Miles and miles and miles away, the staticky yet unmistakable sound of sobs floods through the speaker. Mello touches a hand to his cheek, his scarred cheek, and the ruined skin is damp. Then he drops his hand, because it's still shaking. He waits.

Eventually, Matt staggers up and walks, if a bit unsteadily, across the room. He picks up the lighter first; there's a deep scratch in the side, but Matt rolls the flint and a tiny flame appears. The phone is okay. Matt doesn't know if he's relieved or disappointed when he hears Mello breathing on the other end, but he supposses it doesn't really matter.

"You're still there." It's a statement, not a question, but only because Matt just doesn't have the energy for inflection. Not because in the back of his mind Matt knew Mello was always there, or because Matt thinks he'd know if anything happened to Mello, that he'd be able to feel it somehow. Matt's just tired, and his voice is flat.

"Of course."

Matt wants to snort, because it's not _Of course_, not when Mello left and didn't even leave a fucking _note_ –

"Matt… I'm in some deep shit."

"Me too."

Mello presses his fingers to his mouth and _doesn't scream_, because it'll do no good for them both to crack up, and he _breathes_ and he definitely _doesn't cry_. Mello presses his fingers to his mouth so hard that his hands can't shake. And then he picks the phone up, turns the speaker function off and whispers, into the reciever, "Can you help me?"

Matt closes his eyes, and says _Of course_.

The night drags on and they sit, alone, talking softly. Mello's story sounds foreign to his own ears, and he talks about emotion but doesn't feel it. He explains to Matt how he blew up the building as though reading notes, and Matt replies with utilitarian concern, and they plan to meet as calmly as arranging an assasination. This is where I will be, and that's the signal, and Matt tells Mello not to shoot until he sees the whites of his eyes. Mello says he'll be the one with the yellow rose in his buttonhole, and Matt laughs. It's brittle and manic and Mello sympathises.

"It's going to be okay," Mello swears, because it has to be, and so it will. He thinks Matt's chuckling on the other end, making fun of Mello's wishful thinking, but they turn into sobs and then he's whispering _Shh, I'm here now, I'm here_.

After a moment, it's over, and Matt looks around at his decrepit flat with new eyes.

"Mello?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you who you want to be?"

There's silence, and then, "What kind of question is that?"

"A stupid one," Matt says. "But answer it for me."

"Then no, I'm not. I've never been."

Matt considers his words carefully, and then decides to hell with it. "Same. I think… today is all we've got now. Today is all we'll ever have." He hopes Mello gets the hint.

Mello thinks, maybe when he was younger and had everything to lose, maybe then he would have disagreed. But all Mello's yesterdays are dead and over. And this is his life, and all he has is today. So then…

"Matt?"

"Mel."

_I love you._

"Tuesday, 6am. You know the place. Be there."

Matt smiles, because he heard it anyway. And that's all he needs and all he's ever needed. "Of course."

[end flashback]

The whir of the laptop's fan is loud in their bubble of relative silence, where all the noises around them meld into the background. The fine details have been smoothed out, Matt already has the smoke gun, and Near knows absolutely nothing. Matt closes the laptop and slides it off his lap, closing his eyes with a sigh of contentment. Mello presses a kiss to the top of his head, and Matt figures he never wanted to live long enough to die of lung cancer, anyway.

Mello is fiddling with bits of Matt's hair. Matt certainly doesn't mind because it feels nice but, on the other hand, it's giving Mello an excuse not to talk. Matt needs Mello to talk, because there are some things he's just not brave enough to say.

Matt backs away from things. It's always so much easier to let them slip, letting go of old friendships he was afraid to confront, old arguments he and Mello would never agree on, old hurts that Matt decided would probably never heal. Sometimes there really is no answer, and the only thing to do is move on and deal as best he can.

"Look, Mel. You know I love you, but we can't keep deluding ourselves," Matt murmurs, painstakingly nonconfrontational. Mello, chin still tucked over Matt's shoulder, says nothing. He doesn't move, doesn't even tense. Matt decides this is a good sign and continues.

"We're falling apart at the seams, when we need to keep our act together until Kira's dealt with." _After that we'll be dead, and it won't matter_, he adds silently. Relaxing into the shallow rise and fall of Mello's chest, Matt grabs his hand and twines their fingers together. "There are things we need to confront. But I need you to bring them up, because I won't. Mello, you know I always take the easy way out."

Mello chuckles. "Like hell you do. I remember you at Wammy's. You were the most rebellious, even if you were also the quietest. That's why nobody suspected you."

"And here I thought it was my charm."

"You're about as charming as Near is emotional. No, you hacked servelliance camera feeds and messed with the records, gave teachers trojans and altered our grades." Mello smiles vaguely, remembering. "But nothing anyone did seemed to get to you. No punishment had an effect; and Roger begged you to study, to apply yourself, and you always gave him your word but went back to your games. You talked circles around anyone who tried to convince you of anything, and then did the opposite. You were every bit the pain in the ass I was, but with more subtlety."

"I'm honored you hold such a high opinion of me, but you've got me confused with someone else."

"Oh, I'm sure I have. After all, how many gorgeous redheads did I grow up with are brilliant, video game addicted and absolute smartass hackers do I know?"

Matt turns his head so Mello can't see him grin. "Regardless. Yeah, I messed with records, but that was just another game to me. I talked people in circles because it was the easiest way to get them off my back; ditto with Roger. I never rebelled, I just did what I wanted. And when it raised too much of a fuss I complied with the bare minimum."

"Matt, nobody complies with the bare minimum in Wammy's House and stays third."

"You're right. But that was just another example of my being lazy. I was too intimidated to approach you otherwise. Had to stay friends with you somehow."

Mello is conspicuously silent, but he squeezes Matt's fingers. Taking heart, Matt sighs and finally spits it out – "Mel, even if you think I was making a crack about you confusing me with someone else, I mean it. Not with another literal person. With the Matt you want to see, the little uncorrupted bit of humanity you keep making me out to be. I'm not. It's me here, lazy and very much corrupted, and I'm just like that. When you do realize what an utter fuck up I am, you think it's you who made me into this. I'll claim responsibility for my own flaws, please, and you can stop doing your head in. 'Kay?"

"I don't know why you put yourself down like this." Mello's voice is still light, teasing, but his back's gone the slightest bit rigid.

"I'm not. I am calling the state of things as I see it, which is much more objectively than you. I do what people ask me to, if I agree. Depends if I like them. Even then, nothing more and nothing less. Really, I do. I'm not some hardheaded git. But unless it's helping some old lady across the street, if you don't ask it, I don't give it. I wouldn't know how. Hand me a cigarette, Mello."

Reaching up behind himself and to the left, to nick the pack off the windowsill, Mello complies. Matt's lighter is out instantaneously. He takes a couple of drags, whole half inches coming off in ash. Mello says nothing about the carpet, and Matt thumbs the scratch on the side of his lighter absentmindedly. "What I'm trying to tell you, Mello," Matt blows out smoke through the corner of his mouth, although wisps escape through his nose too, "is that I don't know what to do for you unless you clue me in. I never put myself out there. That was, and is, for a reason. Mello. Social skills are not my forte. I let things go because I can't face them, and right now I'm having an awfully hard time facing you _knowing you're going to pieces_ and not knowing what to do.

"I'm going to need you to tell me. I will not let you go, Mihael. See, you're the one point in my life where I diverged from everything that made sense. I started caring about things that had nothing to do with me. You know me, right? Matt. Insular geek with the goggles and a junkie personality? Doing things that have no payoff other than I get to keep you safe, and know you're happy. I'm a lazy, incorrigible, selfish bastard, and I care about what I care about. That happens to include you, for unfathomable reasons, you terrible beautiful gorgeous asshole." Matt stubs his cigarette on the carpet beside him, already faded and now stained with ash, and tilts his head for a kiss. "Maybe you're right and I do have some sort of self-defeating personality disorder. I fell for you, didn't I?"

Mello blinks, twice, slowly, and leans back in to peck Matt on the nose. A Puckish grin lights up Matt's face as he turns in Mello's lap to face him, laptop shoved aside and forgotten.

"So you will tell me exactly how I can make this better for you, because I am not prepared to let you go." Matt's words are a threat and a promise and a plea all at once, and Mello suddenly realises how much he _loves this man _and wants to cry, and wants to scream, and wants to be thankful and angry and a thousand other things. They will never have the chance to know who they could have, might have been, because they were going to be detectives from the moment they were IQ tested and snatched up by Wammy's. They might never have met at all. They might have lived into their twenties. And Mello knows that Matt is right, that he is tired, more exhausted than he's ever been because he – Mello – is considering what ifs. But one last doubt is plaguing him, and Mello curls his fingers tightly into the front of Matt's shirt. I prayed for him, Mello thinks, and, dear God _please let that be enough. Even though I'm a sinner and my prayers are worthless, don't let Matt have his way, don't let him follow me, because I know he prays too and I know what he prays for_. Mello swears he hears the faintest echoes of Roger's voice, not so much patronising as confused, talking to Matt in his office while Mello listens on the other side of the door – 'I've never known someone work so hard to stay third. Always third. I've never know someone work so hard to fail', and Matt, twelve years old and caustic, saying 'You don't get it. That's not failure'.

Mello wants to say _I don't deserve you_ but Matt will only come back with a quip, and Mello doesn't feel like having his sentiment mocked today. Rationally, he understands Matt isn't making fun of him, only deflecting the attention off himself in the only way he knows. But Mello isn't always rational, so he says, instead, "I've done a lot of awful things," and hopes it will convey the message.

Matt regards Mello with an air of indulgent affection. "I wasn't even going to dignify that with a response, but I love you and so I'll elaborate. I know, you're a mortal sinner. I know you're bad for my health. So are cigarettes and," he says pointedly, "chocolate. I'm bad for your health as well, which you don't seem to realise." Mello opens his mouth to object, but Matt pantomimes zipping his lips and smirks. "Shh. Let me finish. We're mutually unhealthy for eachother, how's that?"

Mello attempts to glare, but he can't muster up the pretense, especially when Matt leans in and kisses the bridge of his nose, as Mello had done before. "Mel, you like someone 'because'. You love someone although."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Sure it does. If you didn't have an inferiority complex the size of a continent and a conscience guiltier than I'm an addict, I'd only like you. 'Cause I'd be able to list my reasons. As it is, though, there's absolutely no explanation for why I can even stand you."

"Why, thank you."

"But I can stand you. In fact, I couldn't live without you. Wouldn't want to, never in a million years. And that, Mel, that's love."

This time Mello is the one giving Matt the backrub, and the sky outside is lightening with the first blushes of sunrise. And Mello thinks Matt has always been the best of them, although Matt will never agree. There aren't any more masks, or any more lies, and no more secret fears hang between them. Mello realises that nothing was ever broken, even when he'd thought there was, and Matt had too – they've always been within inches of their sanity, and they've always been a terrible match, and they've always been fumbling with what to say and how to say it when the truth is no words are needed at all. No words ever were. Even so, Mello thinks it'll be nice to say, just one more time, before he never has the chance again.

"Hey Matt."

Matt stretches and yawns and leans his head against Mello's shoulder, smiling lazily. "Yep."

"I love you."

"I know. You always did, and I always knew."

They won't make it out of this alive, but Matt's there, and Mello's there, and they're together. And it will be what it will be, because nothing else matters.

(Can hold my breath only for a little while, until reality starts sinking in  
Once again, settling for second best  
Turn the page and skip to the end to where I swore that I would try  
Since the last time I crossed that line in the back of my mind I know ...)


End file.
